Mario Kart Tour is celebrating its 1st anniversary with new and returning racetracks and costumes for fans to collect. The mobile game is a hot ticket for Nintendo fans with smartphones, but despite its enjoyable kart-racing gameplay, it's bogged down by an overabundance of predatory and expensive microtransactions.
It's a pity that the game is such a wallet-breaker, because it does have some genuinely good ideas. Nintendo has been updating the game constantly with new characters and tracks, and this dedicated post-launch support is something that many believe could benefit a mainline Mario Kart entry, one that wouldn't require microtransactions since it's not free to play. Mario Kart Tour features a new championship cup every two weeks, offering fans more content to explore and more characters to unlock. In a recent LA Tour, for instance, the game added Funky Kong and Dixie Kong, two classic apes from the Donkey Kong franchise.
This month, Mario Kart Tour is doing something really special to commemorate its one year anniversary. Nintendo's website has all the details about the two-week celebration, which is going on now and lasts until October 20th. The anniversary event will be paying homage to the game's globe-trotting roots, by introducing the brand new New York Minute 3 track and bringing back worldwide tracks such as Paris Promenade 1, Vancouver Velocity 1, Tokyo Blur 1, and London Loop 1. Nintendo is also making Rubies available from all rewards in the game, making it easier (and cheaper) for players to fire the game's gacha-style Pipe and unlock premium characters like Pauline, Mario (Hakama), and Waluigi (Bus Driver) among others. Five different premium characters will be in the Spotlight during each week of the event.
In spite of the microtransaction controversy, there are plenty of things that Mario Kart Tour gets right, and it is improving constantly. Just recently the game finally added a landscape mode, giving players a wider and more comfortable field of view as they race around the track. The overabundance of Rubies in this event should ease the strain on players' wallets and let them spend more time having fun on the road, and that's definitely as it should be. Hopefully future events take a cue from this one.
Microtransactions have been a stain on the video game industry for a long time now. Many games, including the infamous Star Wars Battlefront 2, were outright ruined by them. Players are right to be frustrated about how much money Mario Kart Tour demands of them, but at its core, there is a good game in there. Hopefully the anniversary event will be a good reminder of that.
Source: Nintendo